The Wire: "The decline of the American empire"

The New Yorker has an incredible profile on David Simon and The Wire, the show he created with writing partner Ed Burns. You can read the piece here. Non-watchers should be wary - there are spoilers for the first four seasons. Non-watchers should also be ashamed and go out and watch the DVD's currently available. It's the best show on the air. And one of the most complicated. David Simon says, “It is perhaps the only storytelling on television that overtly suggests that our political and economic and social constructs are no longer viable, that our leadership has failed us relentlessly, and that no, we are not going to be all right.”

Also take heed of the words of Rafael Alvarez, one of the writers of the show, who said, "You know how, in a Russian novel, the reader does the work for the first hundred pages, and then it turns and you’re lost in it? With ‘The Wire,’ it might be Episode 6 before it turns and you’re in.”